How Do Vitamins Work?

A vitamin is a small molecule the body needs but cannot manufacture on its own. Learn more about vitamins in this HowStuffWorks podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff to houstuf Words podcast. Hi Marshall,
brain It seems like you hear something new about vitamins
every day in the news. They stop cancer, they cure diseases,
they reverse aging, you name it. But if you ever
wondered what a vitamin is, A vitamin is a little

(00:22):
molecule that your body needs but has no way of
manufacturing itself. The amount you need every day is tiny,
less than a graham, but the only way for your
body to get it is from the outside, and without
it you have a major problem. Take vitamin C as
an example. In your body, you're forming collagen all the time.
One step and the reaction needs the molecule we know

(00:44):
is vitamin C. Without it, you cannot create new collagen.
Pretty soon, all your teeth become loose because collagen is
what holds them in place. That's the start of a
disease known as scurvy. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, go to house stuff works dot com.